Five Killed In Egypt At Anniversary Protests Of Rabaa Square Massacre

Egyptian police take positions after demonstrators were dispersed quickly Aug. 14, leaving a fire burning in a main street in Giza, south of Cairo. The protest marked the one-year anniversary of the clearing of the Muslim Brotherhood sit-in at Cairo's Rabaa al-Adawiya. Reuters/Al Youm Al Saabi Newspaper

At least five people were killed and 34 wounded Friday during Cairo demonstrations in support of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, emergency-services chief Mohammed Sultan told the Associated Press Saturday. Four supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi and a policemen were killed during protests Thursday. The current death toll is at least 10 over two consecutive days of clashes, as indicated by combining reports by AP and Al Arabiya News.

Demonstrations began Thursday morning and continued into Friday evening to mark the first anniversary of the Rabaa al-Adawiya clashes that left hundreds dead and hundreds more wounded, many of them affiliated with the country’s former ruling Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood.

Human Rights Watch has asked the United Nations Human Rights Council to launch an investigation into the Rabaa sit-in last year. Pro-Morsi supporters established a camp in the square for several weeks and set it up with a kitchen, media center and even a barber. The sit-in began after the removal of the Muslim Brotherhood-backed Morsi.

“In Rabaa Square, Egyptian security forces carried out one of the world’s largest killings of demonstrators in a single day in recent history,” HRW Executive Director Kenneth Roth said in a report released this week. “This wasn’t merely a case of excessive force or poor training. It was a violent crackdown planned at the highest levels of the Egyptian government.”

The Muslim Brotherhood said it would file a complaint with the International Criminal Court against the Egyptian government following the HRW report.

The report “provided damning evidence showing that senior members of Egypt’s post-coup government committed crimes against humanity,” the Freedom and Justice Party, the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing, said in a statement Tuesday.

Protesters had set up camp in the square for days after Morsi was ousted until former Prime Minister Hazem al-Beblawi’s cabinet decided to break up the demonstration using force.

“The dispersal was a hard and sad day for Egypt because of the many victims who were killed,” Beblawi told al-Masry al-Youm. “Whoever made a mistake should be put on trial. It’s an Egyptian, not a Western request.”

HRW has also called for an investigation into Egypt’s current president, Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, who was the head of the military at the time of the Rabaa massacre.